The Book of Love
- Author Kelly Link
- Narrator January LaVoy
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 8 February 2024
- Run Time 23 hours and 32 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fantasy.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents The Book of Love by Kelly Link, read by January LaVoy.
'A dizzying dream ride you will never forget' LEIGH BARDUGO
'An astonishing, gorgeous novel' HOLLY BLACK
'An incredible achievement' CASSANDRA CLARE
FROM PULITZER-PRIZE FINALIST KELLY LINK
Supernatural beings and chaos descend on the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, in the wake of the unexpected return of three missing teenagers.
Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago. They have long been presumed dead. Which they were. But now they are not. And it is up to the resurrected teenagers to discover what happened to them.
Revived by Mr Anabin – the man they knew as their high school music teacher – they are offered a chance to return to the mortal realm. But first they must solve the mystery of their
death and learn to use the magic they now possess. And only two of them may stay.
What they do not realise is their return has upset a delicate balance that has held – just – for centuries.
'A dizzying dream ride you will never forget' LEIGH BARDUGO
'An astonishing, gorgeous novel' HOLLY BLACK
'An incredible achievement' CASSANDRA CLARE
FROM PULITZER-PRIZE FINALIST KELLY LINK
Supernatural beings and chaos descend on the small seaside town of Lovesend, Massachusetts, in the wake of the unexpected return of three missing teenagers.
Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago. They have long been presumed dead. Which they were. But now they are not. And it is up to the resurrected teenagers to discover what happened to them.
Revived by Mr Anabin – the man they knew as their high school music teacher – they are offered a chance to return to the mortal realm. But first they must solve the mystery of their
death and learn to use the magic they now possess. And only two of them may stay.
What they do not realise is their return has upset a delicate balance that has held – just – for centuries.
Critics Review
‘The Book of Love is an incredible achievement — a novel whose people and places feel so true to life that the magic that shimmers through the pages like grown-up fairy dust seems not just real but unquestionable. This modern-day The Master and Margarita will remain with you long after you have turned the last lush and visionary page.’
By turns playful and harrowing, surreal and sagacious, replete with gods and other monsters, The Book of Love is an astonishing, gorgeous novel written with Link’s unique wit, warmth and ability to get under your skin.
An eldritch Our Town that somehow manages to be both epic and intimate. Link's language is nimble and startling and goes down so easy. You won't realize you're drunk on this story until it's too late and you're careening from the spectacularly weird to the wildly funny to an aching grief almost too familiar to bear. A dizzying dream ride you will never forget.
What more can be said about Kelly Link, that has not been (breathlessly) said already? She is a sorcerer. She is our greatest living fabulist. There is no one like her. And The Book of Love is a luxurious, bewitching novel of exceptional beauty and power
Reviewing The Book of Love feels like trying to describe a dream. It’s profoundly beautiful, provokes intense emotion [and] offers up what feel like rooted, incontrovertible truths... So much of Link’s work steps lightly, a tempering of the commonplace with vivid, delicate surprise.
Link has made a modern myth, grand enough to capture all the agony and absurdity and radiance of love itself. This is one of those books that cuts your life in two: before you read it, and after.
A magical debut of life after life
Her writing itself might be a kind of ritual magic designed to draw you irresistibly in. Think The Master And The Margarita, or maybe a later season of Riverdale: everything is strange, anything is possible. Is it too obvious to say you'll love this book?
Link wraps a terrifying core of rusty razor blades in deceptive layers of charming, daffy quirkiness. It's a confection like no other: one you won't forget – or regret.
Magnificently witty in ideas and narrative, sweeping in scale and execution, The Book of Love is an absolute feast of a story, ushering the reader along a path that is always sublime, often hilarious and frequently surreal, and at every single point absolutely rammed full of heart and truth. I am in love with Mo, Laura, Daniel and Suzanne, I want to take a trip to Lovesend, I want to see My Two Hands Both Knowe You play The Kissing Song at the Cliff Hangar, I want to read Caitlynn Hightower's novels, I want to grab coffee at What Hast Thou Ground? I could have kept reading this story far beyond the last page; I wish I could have lived it for real, just a little.
A masterpiece... The small-town world Link conjures in The Book of Love—one full of nuanced relationships between a large cast of characters, local history and cosmic mythology, and magic hiding in plain sight—is among the most detailed and immersive ever put to paper
Reading this felt like entering a vivid fever dream, through the story themes of grief, love, family and identity are explored in a tender and beautiful way
In The Book of Love, Link’s debut novel, she revels in upholding and upturning the genre’s conventions... the writing sparkles with wit and colour, and there is much camp weirdness and shimmering grandeur
A wholly absorbing journey that boasts the hallmarks of Link's shorter fiction while building out a robust cast of characters in the vividly rendered town of Lovesend. At its heart, Link's debut is exactly what the title suggests, a moving and deft exploration of the many ways 'love goes on even when we cannot'
The Book of Love is pure enchantment – a tale of love, death, magic and teenagers being teenagers, rich with fairy strangeness and told in sentences like jewels strung on a chain. A book to get lost in.
A playful, ambitious story of magic erupting in the everyday, so vividly drawn
Link has a genius for combining the mundane with the uncanny, diving into the dark currents where dreams grow and bringing up magic-encrusted jetsam, pearlescent ideas that coil and shock
Lovers of magical coming-of-age stories will find the protagonists’ journeys compelling, while anyone who believes that love is the greatest magic of all will find the redemptive power of love (of all types) imbued in every single page
Like Gilmore Girls if written by Stephen King… Fabulous in all senses of the word
Link’s prose is unmatched: she makes the world seem both more surreal, and more gorgeous at every turn. There is nobody writing like her: Link is truly singular
It's inventive, unputdownable and a ton of fun
There it is: the acidic elixir that makes drinking up Link’s work such an intoxicating treat. In her prose, matter becomes plastic, bodies melt, and the membrane separating reality from fantasy is beaten to airy thinness.
Haunting, immersive, and at times surpassingly beautiful
The Book of Love is, simply put, a magical, confusing, heartfelt, strange, wonderfully written novel that delivers everything fans of Link's short fiction expected while also packing a few surprises
The Book of Love… is going to delight [Link’s] fans and win her new ones. It’s about grief and love - and ancient griefs and loves - and it features the kind of magic and mythology that doesn’t seem to be based in one tradition or lore but still feels familiar’
Every page is an absolute feast to the eyes. The Book of Love is a fabulous magical coming-of-age storywith all the absurdities, myths, and spells that make for an enchanting read.
The prose is diamond-sharp; it’s hard to imagine Link ever writing a clunky sentence or a bad description... her characters feel like family: by turns lovable and enraging
Tolkein topped-up with Judy Blume; teen angst meets mysticism and mystery… With this terrific tome, Link proves that one of fiction’s premier pithy storytellers is in it for the long stretch
A veritable phantasmagoria that we can imagine a fair few grown-up former Harry Potter fans (and Buffy fans) lapping up
A great read
Delivers Link’s style without compromise... a novel that’s as magical and weird and ephemeral as any of her short fiction
Full of Link’s simultaneously sincere and tongue-in-cheek humour and imaginative, beautiful writing – at times, her prose will take your breath away – this book is never boring, and constantly surprises with what comes next
A wild, compelling ride, full of fantastical twists and turns
Both bizarre and compelling, showcasing Link’s talent for crafting unique stories
Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link’s debut novel, The Book of Love, is a fantasy that tackles sibling rivalry, complicated teen friendships, and transcendent love. Nearly a year after high schoolers Laura, Daniel, and Mo die in a tragic accident, they are resurrected by a mystical being. The undead trio (along with another mysterious spirit) must complete a series of magical tasks in order to win a second chance at life. The catch: only two can remain in the land of the living, while the others will be sent back to the realm of the dead. The result is a page-turner that explores what it means to truly be alive.
It's really about teenagers and love and music, buts it’s a beautiful nod to ghosts and what it means to live your life. She’s so smart and such an incredibly eloquent writer and he conjured magic in this way that makes it feel absolutely real.
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